I'm interested in investigating the design of virtual customer
communities for customer involvement in product innovation. Could
anyone suggest me the reserach methodolgy for a quantitive study?

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Request for Question Clarification by aht-ga on 15 Feb 2004 22:10 PST

ryln-ga:

Can you clarify what your desired end-goal of the study is? That will
help in identifying quantitative methods that will help you achieve
the goal.

Incidentally, what you describe sounds a lot like the marketing
research services provided by Hotspex.com. Have you already included
them in your study plans?

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

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Clarification of Question by ryln-ga on 15 Feb 2004 23:42 PST

Hi aht-ga:
I might explain my research in details. 
Becuase new technologies have the potential to greatly enhance the
connectivity between customers(or consumers) and products in a
cost-effective manner and to support new models of new product
development. For example, Hallmark Inc., the maker of greeting cards,
has established the Hallmark Knowledge Creation Community-an online
forum consisting of lead retailers(its first level customers) to
create new product designs. Therefore, in my reserach, I intent to
gain an understanding of all the design elements of VCC (virtual
customer communities)as integral parts of the firm's extended product
development team to embrace customers as new product development(NPD)
partnes. Specifically, I examine in details the themes related to
customer interactions or communications, customer knowledge creation,
customer motivations and VCC-NPD team integration. Also, I will
investigate the relationship between these themes and the innovation
performance. In my idea (*You might suggest me a better idea), I hope
to mail two questionnaires: one is for those companies which now have
established a VCC(like Hallmark Inc.); and the other is for customers
which involved in knowledge creation community. However, I find that
it is difficult to do such survey (for example :I am hard to find
those companies and their innovation performance).Therefore, I need
someone to help me out. If you can help me sloving this problem but
you might take much time, I would like to add the price to $200.

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Request for Question Clarification by aht-ga on 16 Feb 2004 00:08 PST

ryln-ga:

Thanks for describing in such great detail what it is you are hoping
to do. It may well go without saying that companies that have invested
the time and money to create a private virtual customer community may
be reluctant to share actual numbers about the benefits that they may
or may not be receiving. You may also have difficulty finding out
which customers are actually a member of the community, as that
information would be protected by the privacy requirements that the
company must follow.

I will think on this a bit. If I come up with an innovative approach
that you can take to reach your goal, I will post again. As well,
hopefully some of my fellow Researchers can also think on this, and
post if they have something that they think you should consider as an
answer to your question.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher